


Snapshots: Five Shoes Lydia Lost + 1 Someone Bought For Her

by Guede



Series: Experiments in Light and Dark [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe, Female Friendship, Gen, Laura Has a Girlcrush on Lydia, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Traumatic-Resurrection-Disorder, mention of incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4623432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia buys all those shoes for a reason, Laura isn’t okay but she’s learning, and Peter has Opinions on women’s fashion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pumps

**Author's Note:**

> Post- _Camera Obscura_. Mostly a Laura Hale character study, because I resurrected her and while Teen Wolf is happy to crib from Spike's wardrobe for Peter, they apparently missed all of _Buffy's_ primers on PTSD.

Lydia loses her shoe in a street grate behind a club in Los Angeles.

She bitches the entire night about it. Laura doesn’t think it’s anything special, just a standard pair of black pumps, and look, she might have spent over a third of her life locked in guerilla warfare, but she had had side interests. She knows a little about shoes. It isn’t that big of a deal compared to, oh, the angry pack chasing them around town.

“Stiles will buy you a new one,” Laura finally snaps.

“These were limited edition _two years ago_.” Lydia sticks her feet in between the seats and kicks her heels up behind the gearshift. Her dress, already very short-skirted, rides up till Laura can admire her lacy underwear in the rearview mirror. “Are they still following us?”

They are, and Laura is taking a detour towards Laurel Canyon since they’re driving an SUV and she’s driving a muscle car. Not really her preference, but at the moment she’s glad for the low center of gravity. Makes it easier to sling around the turns. “Don’t tell me he can’t just kill somebody for a pair if they don’t sell them anymore.”

“Contrary to popular belief, we don’t kill for just _any_ reason.” There’s a dial tone, Lydia huffing in irritation, and then some texting noises. “Besides, Stiles doesn’t buy my shoes. You’d think after walking into Jackson carrying them for me _three_ times, your werewolf super-senses would have picked up on—what are you doing, go _left_!”

Laura goes right, because she likes Lydia’s intelligence and backbone, but left is a jogging path, and three hours later they hike out of a ravine, bruised, bloody, exhausted. The nearest pack member, Jackson, is in Santa Monica, and won’t be around for another two hours, and Lydia is still bemoaning her damn shoes, like the barefooted, limping queen bee she is.

It’s kind of cute, in a gothic prom way, and also, all kinds of annoying. There is no way Laura can do this for two hours. “What the hell did Jackson do?”

Lydia stops her complaining long enough to hike her nose to astronomical heights of contempt. “Do? 

“He’s in Santa Monica,” Laura says.

They spot a rock. It’s not exactly comfortably-shaped, but it’s big enough to sit on. Of course, Lydia claims it, texting one-handed while dropping the box she’s been carrying all night—without a single complaint—under her feet. “I hadn’t noticed,” Lydia drawls.

The box is why they’re in L.A. The box has Gerard Argent’s preserved, painstakingly dissected heart in it. Honestly, not even Peter had wanted to keep any of the man around, but they need to rebuild relationships with other packs and one of the best ways to do that is to show that yes, Gerard is definitely, truly, beyond a doubt dead. Except L.A. packs are a bunch of losers groping for greatness and it hadn’t taken more than fifteen minutes for one to try and steal it. Lydia lost the shoe twisting around to fling a flaming vodka bottle back through the club they’d just trashed.

Fun times. Arson. It’s a warm night but Laura shivers and hates herself for it. She hadn’t even seen the fire, had just seen the smoking remains and her mother and her uncle being stretchered out. What she knows of how it had looked is from Peter’s stories, gruesome and detailed and calculated to prick at her long after he’s shut up. “Come on. If Stiles had been able to stand up, you know he’d be in Santa Monica.”

“ _That_ is because Stiles is incapable of remembering that the human body doesn’t have a never-ending supply of blood,” Lydia snaps. She taps so hard at her phone that Laura can see her nails bending. “And because your idiot brother doesn’t know how to fight besides running in a straight line.”

“Derek did exactly what he was supposed to do,” Laura snaps right back. She stalks off a few yards, flexes her claws. Her control is shot all to hell these days. It frustrates her because she _had_ been the calm, coolheaded one, the one who’d clue Derek in about reining in Peter when his bloodlust got the better of him, but now she’s tasting blood in her mouth all the time.

Lydia just lets her stand there, texting away like Laura wasn’t once alpha, like she hadn’t gone through a war, like she hadn’t fucking well _died_ and come back. Perched on that rock with her slashed cocktail dress and gilded phone, artistic smudges on her face and clotted blood on the bottoms of her feet. Sometimes Laura sees Peter’s point, and wants to kill them all.

Sometimes. Laura sighs at the night sky, at the waning moon, and then she walks back and sits down by the box. She doesn’t say anything and Lydia doesn’t stop texting, and two hours later Jackson shows up in a Porsche and informs them that they could’ve gone to this house on their escape route, where some producer who bought from Stiles could’ve put them up. This house, Laura suspects, is probably where Lydia told her to take a left.

Lydia coolly tells Jackson that if she wanted to make a Charles Manson night of it, she’d have worn a designer who’d been around then. She doesn’t look at Laura, she’s still looking at her phone, and Jackson is rolling his eyes like it’s nothing new, and Laura is slouching in the backseat with Gerard Argent’s fucking heart in a box because she can’t quite figure out what her own face is doing. She doesn’t want the others to notice and ask because she’s not putting up with Jackson’s bullshit at this hour. She’s also probably not in good enough with Stiles to risk clawing up the dumbass.

And then Lydia starts in on the shoes, and Laura’s face settles into well-worn lines of exasperation. Clearly, the girl is an only child.


	2. Platforms

Why someone would wear platforms for a meeting in a redwood forest, Laura has no idea. 

She gets a little bit of one when the deal goes south and Lydia ducks behind a tree, pulls off her shoe and rips open the platform to pull out a mini-explosives kit, but she can’t help noting that Lydia’s purse could fit a couple warheads.

Lydia snorts. “This is a Hermès. Do you really think I’d risk damaging the lining?”

And then she pulls out a pair of crushable ballet flats in a matching cloth bag from the aforementioned purse, and all right. That’s nice. They’re still halfway up a big hill with no paved roads and paths, but Laura will give Lydia points for forethought.

“But do the bombs really go with that necklace?” she can’t help saying.

“Coming from someone who’s wearing fourteen-carat gold costume jewelry?” Lydia says.

“No point in busting the good stuff when I shift,” Laura shrugs. She fingers the little charm bracelet she’s got on. It’s new—everything she has is new, bar a couple heirlooms saved from their house’s basement—and she’d bought it to throw off a suspicious security guard who’d been eyeing her during a stake-out. She hadn’t looked too closely at it then, and now that she is, it’s kind of twee. “Anyway, had to lighten up the leather jacket and boots somehow.”

Lydia trips over a root and sucks in her breath, but steadies herself before Laura can reach out. She’s already walking crabbed, like her toes are killing her. “I admit I’m impressed,” Lydia says through gritted teeth. Her hand is going white-knuckled on her purse strap. “I didn’t think any member of your family was self-aware enough to realize you all look like eighties rockers.”

“And here I thought you and Peter had found common ground in color-blocking,” Laura says. She eyes the sag of Lydia’s shoulder but when she lifts her hands, it’s to take off her jacket. “It might be an oldie but it’s warm, you know.”

There’s no hesitation when Lydia takes the jacket, and no pause when Lydia hands Laura the purse—which weighs a ton, what’s in there if not warheads?—and then never takes it back. They hike a couple hundred yards. Lydia’s shoes are wearing thin and Laura can smell the bits of blood from her blisters.

Laura sighs. She hates to do it, but she swallows her pride and throws back her head and howls. A howl from the base of the hill immediately replies, and then another, about a mile off. Of course Peter would be closer. “We can stop at that stump over there.”

“And have Peter taking the credit for a completely unnecessary rescue?”

Of course Lydia would have their howls pegged. Unfortunately, amusement isn’t the solution here. “I’m not thrilled either, but it’s three miles to the bottom of the hill,” Laura says.

Lydia considers this while they close in on the stump. Her gait is already getting more clumsy, her feet more slow. She twists up her mouth in a grimace and then claims the stump. Rolling her eyes, Laura takes a nearby root and starts to pick at the splinters in her hair.

“The intelligence was solid,” Lydia abruptly says. She’s staring off into the woods, thoughtful, fingers fidgeting like they’re holding a phantom phone. Her head tilts slightly as she thinks aloud, showing her throat on the side away from Laura. “They checked out three times and their leader owes Scott a life-debt. That—”

“—counts for a lot among leshiye, but everyone has their reckless teenagers,” Laura says dryly. She untangles another twig from her hair. “Believe me, Peter never would’ve agreed to stay with the car otherwise.”

Lydia hums distractedly. “And that matters?”

“Well, he’s got a good nose for treachery.” Laura yanks out a few hairs with the next splinter. Her scalp stings a little longer than it used to; she hasn’t healed quite the same since her resurrection and sometimes Derek goes easy on her in sparring and she has to fight back the urge to slap him. “Anyway, I don’t think it was your fault.”

“Oh, were we assigning fault?” Lydia asks, sugar-sweet.

“Jesus Christ.” For a second Laura sits there like an idiot, with her hands tangled up in her hair and her mouth open. Then she pulls her hands down and grips her knees, and reminds herself that she’s alive, she’s healthy, she has a pack. It only helps enough to keep her from storming off into unfamiliar territory. “Look, okay, I know I get the milk runs because I don’t have it in me to—”

“Are you _suggesting_ I need a babysitter?” Lydia says. Her voice is absolutely glacial.

Laura feels like she’s made of lava, and ready to erupt any time now. She breathes and the air in her throat is thick and bitter and burns through her nose. She digs her nails into her knees and wills them to not turn into claws.

“Yes, let’s discuss the men now, this seems like the perfect setting,” Lydia suddenly mutters. When Laura looks over, the other woman is leaning over with her head in her hands.

Concerned, Laura moves closer, but Lydia waves her off. Lydia’s just massaging her temples, her fingers occasionally twisting back into her hair, annoyed and tired but not ill. She makes a blind grab like she wants her phone, but then pulls her arms in and tucks them under her head. Her hair is frizzing around her face and going into sweaty clumps at the ends, and her eyeshadow is smeared on her hands.

“So this isn’t a milk run,” Laura finally says. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Lydia sighs. She pulls off her ballet shoes, turns them over one at a time to see the holes in the bottoms. Sighs again and flips them to the ground. “And what, exactly, fooled you? Your uncle’s terrible attempt to get back into Stiles’ good graces by sucking up to me? Derek’s equally terrible attempt to prove to Stiles’ father that he’s the family-first type?”

Laura opens her mouth. Closes it. Rubs at the side of her face and nods and then puts her hand over her eyes and wonders how lamer she can get.

“Just tell me they get better,” Lydia says. She reaches for her purse again, and this time does dig out her phone, only to make a face when she sees the lack of reception. “Tell me they get better, and just learn to show up and apologize, or so help me, I will start dosing their coffee with wolfsbane.”

“They’re going to need their own coffee-maker,” Laura says. She grins when Lydia throws up her hands and lets out a little cry of frustration, and surprise, it’s a real, true grin. “Yeah, I know. But they always do that. Can’t just talk, no matter what comes out of Peter’s mouth. Always with the grand gesture. I used to beg Mom for solo jobs just to avoid seeing it.”

Lydia snorts. “Well, in that case, we can still make the tail end of New York Fashion Week if we leave tomorrow.”

“You think I’d pass the dress code?” Laura says.

“Oh, believe me, I’ll take care of that,” Lydia says, and she smiles and even if it’s a little sharkish, that one is real and true, too. 


	3. Wellies

Losing the rain boots isn’t Lydia’s fault. It’s Scott’s fault. Laura likes Scott. Neither Derek nor Peter do, probably as much because Scott is the one person Stiles expresses sarcasm-free love and affection for as because Scott can be really boneheaded stubborn when he wants to be, but Laura appreciates an alpha who isn’t married to power plays. But still, it’s Scott’s fault for not paying attention to the fine print in the truce for every supernatural creature attending Coachella, and it’s Scott’s fault for not paying attention to Stiles, Deucalion, and Chris Argent when they all screamed at him to _not_ throw water at the undine.

So even though they’re in a desert, the place is now a mudbath. Lydia’s boots got sucked down somewhere back by the beer tents and now Laura is stuck carrying her around piggyback-style because Lydia is the only one with a working cell phone ( _Erica_ ), Laura’s wellies are filled with mud but still on, and the rest of the pack is haring off after the undine to try and work it out before they all disappear in a giant sinkhole. Not exactly what Laura was thinking for her first post-death music festival.

“No, you stupid ignoramus, why the hell would—yes, that’s completely why you had a D minus in European history, you never learn from your mistakes—oh, ugh, I can’t even.” Lydia has a charming habit of mumbling commentary under her breath. “Goddamn it. No one’s listening to a thing I’m saying.”

“Frozen lemonade?” Laura says.

Lydia shifts on her back, jabbing elbows into Laura’s shoulders. Werewolf strength makes Lydia’s weight negligible, but the pointy joints, that it can’t handle. “What? Oh. Oh, might as well.”

Laura is already swinging Lydia off her back and onto the stand’s tiny counter. The operator is nowhere to be seen, but Laura takes out a twenty and stuffs it into the tip jar, and then straightens up to find Lydia helping herself to a large cup. She doesn’t make one for Laura, but she passes over the scoop and then uses her hip to nudge the cup of crazy straws Laura’s way.

Certain things taste a little…not off, but it’s like Laura’s coming back to it after a long, long time away, like from early childhood, and the taste then and the taste now don’t match. Lemon is one of those flavors. It’s good. It’s refreshing, especially since there is, somehow, a goddamn dust-storm kicking into their faces on top of the quagmire at their feet, but now Laura’s thinking about all the—crap she really doesn’t want to think about, and suddenly she wishes she was on undine-chasing duty. “Not what I was expecting,” she mutters.

“Sadly, music festivals rarely live up to the hype,” Lydia says, unexpectedly grim. When Laura looks at her, she’s stabbing at the mounds of slush with her straw as if she’s digging for vital organs. “They promise you fun and sunshine and daisy chains, and what you end up with is smashed toes and horrific toxic waste dumps at the toilet and rapey stoners in the parking lot.”

“You speak from experience?” Laura says. She stirs her own lemonade. The ‘frozen’ part is disappearing more quickly than she’d like, leaving a sticky, too-sweet syrup behind, but they have a whole cart full under Lydia’s pert bottom.

Lydia makes a face. She doesn’t normally talk about what happened pre-banshee, though her mannerisms and shopping tastes tend to speak volumes. “My mother,” she starts, and Laura deliberately doesn’t look more alert because Lydia never, ever mentions her parents. “Once made an attempt at being the ‘cool mom.’ No doubt the fact that she’d caught my father having a fling with someone who looked like she’d washed out of _American Idol_ played a part, but at any rate, she took me to a pop concert. I was too young and naïve to understand that free tickets, transportation and branded merchandise all come with the price of saving your roofied parent from the delinquent scalpers behind the dumpster.”

Laura nods in sympathy. If she were a normal person, or even somebody with a sense of compassion falling within socially acceptable boundaries, she’d probably say something. Something nice. Something soothing. Something that wouldn’t point out Lydia sounded awful brittle about her drunken mother, considering what had happened since. So Laura just nods, and when she notices Lydia’s running low on frozen lemonade, scoops some more into her cup without being asked.

“She was too busy fighting with my father to listen when I told them to stay inside,” Lydia adds more quietly, after a long pause. Her fingers tighten on her cup, denting the cheap waxed paper. “You can’t save them all the time.”

“They’re your parents. That’s not your job, they should be able to handle themselves,” Laura says. She sucks hard at her frozen lemonade right after, chasing the last drops till there’s just flavorless ice left. “This is so stupid. We spent months driving around making peace and it’s going belly-up over a goddamn mosh pit. Forget the others, let’s go find the undine. I have a few ideas.”

“Hmm.” Lydia flips her hair when Laura looks over, all insouciant confidence. She pulls out her phone, checks it, and then rolls her eyes. She lifts her arms for Laura like a princess beckoning a knight. “Boys. All right, then, we _will_ take care of it. God knows my sunscreen isn’t rated for this nonsense.”

They take fresh cups of frozen lemonade with them. Lydia starts out holding them, but inevitably they migrate to Laura’s hands while the other woman is screaming Latin. Dust gets into the ice and makes it gritty and weirdly colored, but victory slush is still the best.


	4. Boots

They’re doing some last-minute shopping in a high-end boutique when Lydia circles back. “Do you think it’s your mother’s fault?”

For all that Laura grew up with Peter’s sarcasm, and Stiles has an offhand psychological insight that skewers you in the ass, she’s still a little blindsided when Lydia wants to be blunt. She studies the rows and rows of boots before them. The smell of the leather is making her a little light-headed.

“Peter’s happier not in a coma,” she says. 

Lydia rejects the simple English-style boot in her hand and exchanges it for a complicated mess of buckles and grommets.

“It’s not like Mom had a lot of choice. She and Peter both lost their anchors in the fire,” Laura adds. She’s not defensive. She takes her time speaking, stays calm. She’s been through defensive and understanding and bitter and come out to plain acceptance. “He’d liked Derek before. Kind of. I mean, not like—”

“So it wasn’t a _Flowers in the Attic_ situation?” The buckles and grommets combination gets nixed when Lydia discovers something wrong with the zipper. She takes down an oxblood boot with a sky-high heel.

“I think,” Laura starts. She bites her lip and stares at the shoes. Then she turns and looks towards the front of the store.

It’s quiet. Dark. Empty. They technically broke in, even if they’re going to leave the equivalent of commissions for the whole damn staff on their way out, because appearances are important and the damn airline has misplaced their bags and Lydia is not doing a business meeting in flats. Simple problems, Laura thinks, and tries not to laugh.

“I think I’m over that fight,” she finally says. She shrugs. “Look, it’s fucked up but they’re not killing each other, and sometimes they’re even good for each other. Peter needed somebody to pull him out of that coma, and Derek needed to do something with his damn guilt. If Derek had gotten a chance to get out once in a while, be—but he didn’t. It isn’t normal even for werewolves but we left that station a long time ago. And my mom—well, whatever she was expecting, she never objected to the result.”

“Hmm,” Lydia says. The oxblood pair’s good enough to try on. She gets a little stuck halfway in and braces herself against the wall, tugging at the boot top.

“Mom—I don’t know.” Laura exhales sharply. Her head hurts a little. Maybe it’s the jet lag. Then she snorts and shakes herself, because God, denial much? “She was focused on getting rid of the threat. It’s what you’re supposed to do, as alpha. You get rid of anything that’s a threat to the pack.”

The oxblood boots are on, and instead of admiring them in the mirror, Lydia is standing with her hands on her hips and eyeing Laura. “Excuse me, when did you lose your brain?”

“You weren’t _there_ ,” Laura snarls, and slaps her hand out. Just in time, she remembers she’s a fucking werewolf, all right, and B&E and let’s not damage the store more than we have to.

She nearly dislocates her hand saving the wall. Her wrist aches and she rubs her other hand around it for a few seconds, trying to just breathe.

“Well,” Lydia says. It’s prim and tight and so perfectly unimpressed that Laura laughs.

The laugh loosens up Laura’s chest. She breathes in deeply, letting the leather scent float her for a second, and then lets it out. “Yeah. Well. I spent a lot of time holding Mom up, since Derek had his hands full with Peter. Old habit.”

Lydia looks at the boots on her in the mirror. She tips one foot onto its toes, then sets it flat on the floor and frowns at her reflection. “I didn’t know you could share anchors.”

“Scott does,” Laura says.

“Scott McCall is. Yes.” Somehow Lydia encompasses both her grudges and her intellect rising above them in a single hand wave. “That’s Scott.”

“You can share, and you can have more than one.” Laura picks up a pair of boots. The leather is stiffer than she expects, smooth but rigid under her fingers. She puts it back and the next pair feels like butter running through her hand, and she almost catches herself purring. “Even before the fire, we were my mom’s anchor. But my sister didn’t—and Mom was shoving Derek at Peter, trying to keep him stable. She needed me. I wasn’t enough, I couldn’t help her, but she needed me so I couldn’t leave.”

“My mother needed me, too. God knows how she and my father were going to keep score otherwise,” Lydia says. She leans down and pulls off the oxblood boots, then holds them up to her cheek. After a moment’s study, she takes out her phone and turns on the flashlight mode. “If you’re going to destroy the—”

Laura sighs. “I think I’m over that now, thanks. I…do I blame Mom? Is there a point? She’s dead now, and nobody’s bringing her back.”

They look at the boots against Lydia’s face.

“Too purple,” Laura says.

“Damn,” Lydia says. She shoves them back on the shelf and goes digging in the other aisle, then comes back with a dove-gray pair in the same style.

Lydia tries them on and they fit, and Laura has to admit the heels do pretty amazing things for Lydia’s shapely, but not particularly gazelle-like, legs. The color works and Lydia zips up while Laura is counting out the cash at the counter.

“It’s weird, but sometimes I think the incest is…healthier? I mean, at least they see each other. My mom…towards the end, I don’t think…” The bills slide through Laura’s fingers without thinking. She catches herself, curses, and starts over with counting. “I never wanted to sleep with her, or her with me, okay? But I don’t think she remembered she had living children. I think she just thought of us as fighters. Peter gets so angry with Derek sometimes, and I’m…I’m jealous, because Mom never did. She was so cold at the end.”

“She’s dead,” Lydia says. She doesn’t put her hand on Laura’s hand or shoulder, or anything like that. Her arms are occupied with her purse and Laura’s satchel. But she stands there and waits for Laura to lay out the bills three times.

Laura finally closes her wallet. She holds out her hand for her bag, shoulders it, and then turns towards the door.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, she is.”


	5. Stilettos

Laura uses one of Lydia’s Louboutins to gouge out an eye.

Lydia breaks the heel off the other stabbing it into a hand.

Afterwards, they flop down between the corpses and watch an unconscious Peter while Erica goes to get a car. Stiles and Scott are upstairs, arguing about something Laura probably should care about, as the de facto eldest; Derek and Deucalion are back in Beacon Hills, holding down the home-front, and Chris Argent got his jaw broken early in the fight and is only awake and walking in the most technical sense. Laura can’t quite work up the energy.

It was a good fight. A necessary one. She’s going to sleep just fine tonight on all the dead bodies in her tally.

“Sometimes I wonder if I were dead,” she says. Then she shakes her head. Some blood flies into her eye and she grimaces and wipes her hair back. “If I were dead again.”

Lydia doesn’t exactly freak out, but she does put down her phone. “If you were dead again?”

“Yeah.” Laura flaps her hand at the room. “I don’t want to be, okay? I just wonder.”

A series of thuds and muffled cries issues from the upstairs. Lydia cocks her head, then picks her phone back up. She’s more wolf-like than McCall sometimes.

“I remember a little bit sometimes,” Laura adds. “It wasn’t great. Well, I’m guessing I was actually in Gerard Argent’s goddamn head, somewhere, so of course it wouldn’t be, but—I didn’t have to do anything in there. I didn’t think I could. It was—over, for me.”

Lydia mumbles about Jackson under her breath, so Laura doesn’t think she’s listening. But then she puts her phone away and turns, bunching her bloody, matted hair over one shoulder with her hands, and levels a steady gaze at Laura.

“I knew Stiles was lying his ass off about what he was going to do with Gerard Argent,” she says. “He can’t lose what he loves, so he gets lost first. It’s stupid and I hope to God that Scott gets through to him someday.”

“Yeah.” Laura checks that Peter’s still out. He is. For all his devil-may-care sociopathy, Peter’s always taken his losses hard, and these days he tends to be a lot more preemptive about it. “I think he’ll be okay.”

Lydia absently scrubs at some blood on her neck. “I think I’m so incredibly tired of being okay. I was okay when my parents died, and Jackson’s parents died, and the whole town was a private battlefield. I was okay when Jackson decided it would be a _brilliant_ idea to wolf up as a method of survival. I was okay when Stiles built us a house and a pack and tried to pretend they were both Scott’s, like we’re secondhand goods. I was okay when Gerard Argent took Stiles from us. My God, I was _okay_ when I realized what makes me happy is staying in a shitty little danger magnet of a town, with a bunch of dysfunctional psycho-wolves and a self-destructive blood mage. It’s so goddamn _exhausting_.”

She heaves her shoulders when she’s done, then pulls her knees up and drops her head onto them. Her hair is so red that the dried blood almost looks black in it, Laura thinks. Some of her concealer is smudging off, showing deep circles from her and Peter and Stiles’ long research nights.

“I wonder if I were dead again, whether it wouldn’t feel so damn weird,” Laura says quietly. “Because you’re right, it’s sort of insane, what we’ve got here, but it makes me happy. And this isn’t what I thought would make me happy. I don’t know. I just wanted to get out and live a normal life. Go to college. Get a stupid job, go out drinking with coworkers, make Derek smile once in a while. Stop being obsessed with death and take a second to be fucking happy I didn’t get burned up with everyone else.”

Lydia looks at her, then out at the room. There are corpses folded into the wastebins. An arm is sticking out of a file cabinet.

“It’s selfish,” Lydia finally says.

“It’s not okay,” Laura agrees.

Lydia lifts her head from her knees. She runs a tired hand over her hair. “I want new shoes,” she mutters.

Laura concentrates, then shakes her head. Upstairs it doesn’t sound like they’re any closer to resolving the argument. Then she looks down, noticing her sleeve flipping oddly. She holds up her arm and then sighs. The cuff is ripped open. “I need a new jacket.”

“They’re still busy?” Lydia says.

Laura nods.

“Erica’s still looking for the car.” Lydia pulls out her phone and pokes at it, then holds it out for Laura to see. On the screen is a shopping app, with a scrolling display of the latest bargains. “Fifteen percent off if the purchase is over five hundred dollars.”

“We should probably get Peter closer to the door,” Laura says, but she’s scooting closer. Peter’s stable, he’s just worn out from healing. It’d be easier to haul him into the car, whenever that finally shows, if they get him up before the blood dries and sticks him to the floor, but that is a nice pair of jeans. “This is so not okay.”

“I know,” Lydia says, frowning. “Who on earth thought that color would work on _anybody_?”


	6. +1 Sandals

Peter makes a hilariously disgusted face and tsks disapprovingly. “Laura, dear, that is a lovely shoe, but do you want to cripple her?”

Laura looks at the shoe in her hand, then at the stack of boxes in front of her. Then out at the mall around them. “Why the hell are you here?”

Her uncle takes the shoe from her, expertly reassembles the wads of tissue paper and cardboard inserts that had been packed into it, and firmly drops the shoebox lid over it. “I can’t go shopping with my niece?”

“You _don’t_ shop,” Laura says. “You stalk people and try to talk Stiles into pants that actually fit his ass and jump Derek into shredding changing rooms.”

She moves onto the next box. The sandal heel had looked like a little ski-ramp, but she’s seen Lydia in higher so she’s not quite sure what Peter is talking about. But she doesn’t usually wear heels, and Peter has random knowledge about everything because she really never wants to know why it’s not random, and so she’ll give him that one.

Peter is still standing there. He plays mildly hurt for the time it takes for Laura to sift through two boxes, and then goes back to shaking his head, making disbelieving noises, or sighing heavily. Five more shoes get crossed off, and then Laura is out of shoes so she waves for the shop assistant to come take them back and bring her a fresh batch.

The shop assistant leaves, and Peter shifts his foot. That’s all, but his stance changes and his mask drops and oddly enough, he looks sober beneath it. “You are my niece,” he says.

“Tried to kill me,” Laura says.

“Would have killed you, in another world,” Peter says, like he’s correcting her. He tilts his head. He’s in earnest, and it should make her mad but it’s just familiar, at this point. “I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but I would have done it.”

Familiarity kills, they say, but Laura sighs and sits down to wait for more shoes. “I guess that means something.”

“You may not believe me, but it does.” Peter sits down next to her. He straightens his shirt-cuffs, then drapes his arms over the arms of the chair. His gaze sweeps slowly over their surroundings, marking off exits and obstacles, and making a couple women blush along the way. He smiles absently at them. “You’d die, but you’d fight. You did fight, Laura. That means something, too.”

Laura gets it. “Are you ever really unconscious?”

“You’re my niece,” Peter repeats. “I might kill you, but I always want a fight out of you. And I will fight for you. Again, I might have killed you first, but I will fight for you.”

“All this talking about killing me, another girl might take it the wrong way,” Laura says dryly. She feels the corners of her mouth twitching, as if they’re under someone else’s control. It’s a little weird, but then, everything is. “Sometimes I wish I’d killed Mom.”

Peter goes very still. He’s unpredictable when someone else bad-mouths his sister, Laura’s mother, even though Laura knew the two of them hadn’t seen eye to eye. They’d fought plenty, and violently enough that—it had been a whole other complicated mess, and one she’s not really ready to unpack. She wishes she hadn’t let that slip out.

“I can understand that,” is what Peter eventually says. His voice is a little tight, but his heartbeat is steady.

“Yeah. We all do. Runs in the family, I guess.” Laura leans forward to put her elbows on her knees. She rubs the side of her face. “Relax. Derek would miss me.”

“Derek would, but he survived your death once,” Peter says calmly, blandly. Like he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. “So did I. And Lydia didn’t even know you, Laura. You don’t need them.”

“But I like them,” Laura shoots back. She realizes a little late, pauses, and then snorts into her hand while Peter pretends he isn’t even a little bit surprised. He’s really just strange sometimes, her uncle. He shouldn’t give a damn but he does, and somehow neither of them mind. “I don’t know why. You tried to kill me, and you’re as bad for Derek as you are good for him, and you’re still my favorite uncle.”

“Your only uncle,” Peter says, and then looks up. The shop assistant is back and is thrilled to be handing the new stack of shoeboxes over to him. “And that means, much as it pains both of us, it falls to me to see that at least one of you and Derek has some taste. The Louboutins this season are much too overwrought. You might get away with it if this were a working vacation, but as far as I’ve been told, Monterey has no imminent need for heroics.”

Laura rolls her eyes, but she takes the box Peter hands her. “Lydia’s allergic to heroics. She told Jackson it gives her hives.”

“Sensible girl. I like her,” Peter says. He hands her another box. “This won’t coordinate with as much of her wardrobe, but it’s more suitable for the seaside.”

They’re both kind of outlandish, in Laura’s opinion, but Peter’s right about at least the wardrobe coordination. She weighs them in her hands, then goes for the second pair. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Peter says, and he’s sincere. He gives her a hand up and walks her to the register, and then disappears in the direction of the men’s suits.

He’s probably not just suit-shopping. Laura probably should go after him. Derek would, and so would Scott. Stiles would already know and have fifteen contingency plans, and Lydia would have vetted them for inadvertent heavy-bleeding-Stiles endings. 

Laura feels like getting something sweet. They’re not going to kill each other today, she thinks, and the Godiva store is just a few hundred yards away. She hasn’t had one of their shakes since they left Beacon Hills, and what today is, she decides, is the day she breaks that dry spell. And that might not be okay, and she might not be fine, but she sticks the shopping bag under her arm and thinks that Lydia’s going to like this pair.

She’s not running. She doesn’t feel like running. She’s here, and she’s taking a break.


End file.
